Card Lores:Sanctuary Gold Dragon
He is "Sanctuary Guard Dragon" in the alternate timeline of [[Cray i|Cray i'']]. The "Golden Dragon King," he is spoken of in the histories of the United Sanctuary as a great hero and wise king who tragically fell when the flame dragons became ambitious and power-hungry. However, in the Dragon Empire, he is considered to be a repressive, backwards-thinking tyrant who mistreated dragons other than cosmo dragons while putting humans on a pedestal. Unsurprisingly, the truth is far more complicated. After the fallen angel wars, the world of Cray entered a period of instability. While the inhabitants of the heavenly realm were split on what to do, Sanctuary Gold Dragon, one of the most powerful of the holy dragons, took the initiative and descended to the earthly realm. He united many humans and dragons under his banner, the humans seeing him as a savior while the dragons fearing his power. With an army, he slowly began uniting the tri-continental landmass by warring with the various warlords that controlled it, hunting down those he perceived as evil. Eventually, he was crowned king. During the early days of the grand sanctuary, Sanctuary Gold Dragon was a beloved ruler. He listened to his people's problems and worries, and tried his hardest to address them. However, as the centuries went on, he became slowly detached from his people and became set in his ways. Believing that the old ways were sufficient even in an ever-changing world, he slowly began to fail to solve his people's problems. He became more merciless to evildoers when he would previously be empathetic to them, no longer understanding why they did what they did. Eventually, Sanctuary Gold Dragon began to favor humans over dragons; he saw humans as well-behaved and peaceful, and dragons as violent and power-hungry. Sanctuary Gold Dragon's administration began to implement policies that disproportionately harmed dragons, and the dragon population began to resent him. Eventually, an idealistic leader arose among the dragon tribes and started a rebellion against the kingdom. Most of the dragons of the grand sanctuary rallied to the rebel leader's side, sick and tired of being treated poorly by Sanctuary Gold Dragon's reign. Sanctuary Gold Dragon, assuming that the rebels were simply evil and power-hungry, fought them with no mercy, but in a duel with the rebel leader, Sanctuary Gold Dragon looked into his enemy's eyes and had an epiphany. In his eyes, Sanctuary Gold Dragon saw hate, anger, and ambition, but also hope, fear, and desperation. In that moment, he realized that his enemies ''weren't evil. Sanctuary Gold Dragon realized that they had hopes and dreams and fears and biases just like normal people, and he also realized, for the first time, that even though he was a guardian dragon, he wasn't perfect. Due to that moment of hesitation, the rebel leader ran him through, killing him. In the aftermath, the dragon rebels and the humans allied with them took most of the land; they founded the Dragon Empire, and their rebel leader became its first emperor. They began to portray the Golden Dragon King as a cruel, ignorant king who persecuted the dragons. Meanwhile, most of the humans and dragons aligned with Sanctuary Gold Dragon retreated to the west, forming their own little United Sanctuary. They decided that having an immortal dragon as their king perhaps wasn't the best idea, so they separated the seats of guardian dragon and king of the Sanctuary, with the latter position being handed over to human and elven kings. Despite this, they whitewashed the Golden Dragon King, painting him as a purely good and just king who protected humans. As Sanctuary Gold Dragon died with guilt and regret, he became a wandering, lingering spirit. He ruminated over his mistakes in the millennia that followed his death, and became more cynical than he was in life. As his spirit wandered through the world, observing people from all walks of life, he came to believe that pure good and pure evil did not exist, and that most people were merely stumbling in the dark, trying to make their way through life, doing the best they could with the beliefs and tools they had. As a result of this, the spirit of Sanctuary Gold began spending its boring afterlife studying and deconstructing the heroes and villains of history. The Golden Dragon King and the Overlord Eventually, soon after the imprisonment of the Overlord, Sanctuary Gold Dragon, curious about Dragonic Overlord's motives and doubting that Overlord was as evil and bloodthirsty as everyone believed without a reason, went down to his underground prison and appeared to him. At first, Dragonic Overlord was unrepentant for his crimes, and was training inside the prison for his chance to break out and resume his quest for power. However, as Sanctuary Gold Dragon continued to visit the Overlord and probed into his past, he began to deconstruct the Overlord's motives. Quite simply, he pointed out that Dragonic Overlord was taught from a young age by the Dragon Empire's expansionist society that martial might was all that mattered, and now that he was punished by the Empire for doing what they wanted of him, he was emotionally lost. Dragonic Overlord was not an übermensch with unyielding ideals, but simply a product of society trying to do the best he could, exactly as Sanctuary Gold Dragon suspected. When Overlord realized this, he was angered; he had nothing other than his pursuit of power, and he now understood that that pursuit was merely a facade that he used to pretend he was a larger-than-life figure. He was also angered that Sanctuary Gold Dragon, a tyrant in the eyes of the dragons, would hypocritically admonish him like this without admitting his own faults. Sanctuary Gold Dragon responded that he had already realized his sins long ago, and he had spent his entire afterlife atoning for them. Sanctuary Gold Dragon then offered the Overlord a chance to find "something else" to work towards, and the Overlord, questioning his entire life, agreed. With what little power he had, Sanctuary Gold Dragon sealed away most of the Overlord's power and teleported him from the prison, changing his appearance into an unrecognizable hybrid of flame dragon and cosmo dragon. The two then began wandering the lands of Cray. "Seventeen centuries of ethnic cleansing? If that were true, there wouldn't be a strand of Marleyan hair left on this planet. Our ancestor, Ymir, brought us nothing but power and wealth with the power of the titans? That doesn't sound like any human I've ever heard of." Category:Lores